2 GUNS (review)

Review by Angela Rawling

Sometimes you just want to see people shoot people. Other times, you want to step it up a notch, with a decent story and good actors to shoot people. 2 Guns delivers basically everything you want from a good, classic action movie.

It features strong male leads.

Mark Wahlberg and Denzel Washington share a perfect chemistry as two guys who really cannot decide whether to trust each other. Wahlberg plays his usual flippant and comedic Michael ‘Stig’ Stigman to Washington’s dramatic, do-whatever-it-takes Robert ‘Bobby’ Trench.

It features a hot sex scene.

Rumor is that Paula Patton (Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol) waited to inform her husband, singer Robin Thicke, that she was topless in her first scene until they were seated at the premiere.

It features hardened bad guys from every angle.

From Edward James Olmos (Battlestar Galactica, Dexter) as the ruthless drug lord, Papi Greco, to Bill Paxton (Big Love, Aliens) as the mysterious money hunter and even James Marsden (X-Men) as Stig’s ally-turned-enemy Quince, the movie is packed with intense actors cast exactly for their precise roles.

It features car chases, explosions, a helicopter crash, and all those other fun action things. It even has the wacky twist, revealed fairly early in the film, that both Stig and Bobby are actually law enforcement officers believing the other to be crooked and criminal.

The film opens with Stig and Bobby blowing up a diner, rewinds, and explains to the audience what lead up to this event.

It then continues with a bank robbery. The pair are expecting to steal 3 million dollars and end up with 43 million instead, each trying to set the other up. Once each realizes the corruption behind the initial plans, the two team up to try to get back the money that has been taken from them while dealing with the other players all desperate to have their share.

With all these elements, it would be easy for 2 Guns to turn into a ‘been there, done that’ film. In some ways, it is. You have seen all these individual aspects come together before in films much like this. You have seen conspiracy in the military, betrayal, and an unlikely pairing of opposing personalities.

The difference?

Does there have to be one?

The film captures the best elements of the genre and turns them into a single film, based on the comic series of the same name.

Washington brings a class and prestige that would otherwise have been lacking, making Wahlberg’s brash candor work as comic timing. Some of the stunts, such as Stig and Bobby lifting themselves from harm’s way while a bull attempts to crush them or Stig leaping from his car through Bobby’s car’s window to tackle Bobby out the door and on to the ground are new ideas that build on a perfect storm of ridiculous circumstances.

The result is a fun and entertaining ride, pure and simple.

If you want something new, then this film is not for you. You have seen many movies like this before.

But if you want to sit back, relax, and maybe even enjoy a drink while you take in a laugh-out-loud action comedy?

Then embrace the repetition – practice makes perfect, right? – and proudly announce that you are going to see 2 Guns and will probably enjoy yourself.

There’s no shame in loving a good movie.